Golfweek’s Best 2023: The top private golf courses in each state.
Want to find the best private golf courses in each state? You’re in the right spot, and welcome to Golfweek’s Best 2023 list of top private layouts as judged by our international panel of raters.
The hundreds of members of that ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings.
KEY: (m) modern, built in 1960 or after; (c) classic, built before 1960. For courses with a number preceding the (m) or (c), that is where the course ranks on Golfweek’s Best lists for top 200 modern and classic courses in the U.S.
* indicates new or returning to the rankings
Editor’s note: The Golfweek’s Best 2023 rankings of top 200 Modern and top 200 Classic Courses will be released June 19.
Tourists visit the charming village of Watkins Glen, New York, for many different reasons. Some travelers enjoy relaxing vacations at the town’s scenic lakeside resorts. NASCAR fans know the area for races held at Watkins Glen International. Meanwhile, outdoor adventurers find a world of adventure at the incredible Watkins Glen State Park.
What makes Watkins Glen State Park such a great spot? Though many gorgeous features contribute to the park’s popularity, the Watkins Glen waterfalls are what make the area perfect for adventurous tourists. On a hike through the park’s picturesque trails, visitors can find 19 waterfalls. Find all these natural wonders and more with this list of the best things to do and see at Watkins Glen State Park.
Four aces on one day on the same hole was cool, but it certainly won’t happen again this year.
Here’s perhaps the safest bet for this week’s PGA Championship: Four players won’t make holes-in-one on the same day at No. 6 of Oak Hill’s East Course. Sounds like a silly bet, of course, but it happened during the second round of the 1989 U.S. Open on the East.
There’s no way that exact feat will reoccur in this year’s PGA Championship on the same layout, because that hole no longer exists.
In a two-hour span that morning in 1989, Doug Weaver, Mark Wiebe, Jerry Pate and Nick Price each made an ace on the 167-yard par 3. The hole wasn’t exactly in a bowl, but it was pretty close, having been cut into the base of a swale. None of the four holes-in-one flew into the cup, each instead landing left, right or beyond the flag then curling into the cup. Each player used a 7-iron.
An amazing occurrence, for sure. It had never happened before in major championship or PGA Tour golf. Before the round, tournament officials had noted that it was a likely spot for ace, and they ended up with four.
That hole isn’t on the course any longer, thanks to a recent renovation by architect Andrew Green to Donald Ross’s layout in Rochester, New York. That sixth hole from 1989 was created during a 1970s renovation to the course by George Fazio and Tom Fazio. Green ripped it out, instead installing a new par 3 as No. 5. Green’s new No. 6 is a punishing par 4 that plays over and along a creek, earning the name Double Trouble. The hole is listed on the scorecard at 503 yards.
Not that a repeat of what has been dubbed the “Four Aces” – not to be confused with the LIV team of the same name – was likely anyways. The PGA of America reports that the odds of any Tour player making an ace on a given par 3 are 3,000 to 1. The National Hole-in-One Association calculated at the time that the odds of four Tour pros acing the same hole in one day to be 8.7 million to one, although such a friendly hole location that allows balls to break into the cup from multiple directions surely improved those odds a bit.
What do the pros face this week in the PGA Championship? StrackaLine shares the details on Oak Hill East.
Oak Hill’s East Course in Rochester, New York – site of this week’s PGA Championship – originally was designed by architectural legend Donald Ross and opened in 1926. The layout was revised several times over the decades, most recently as Andrew Green put much of the Ross flavor back into the East.
Oak Hill’s East will play to 7,394 yards with a par of 70 for this week’s major championship.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the pros face this week at Oak Hill.
Starting in 2015, the club decided to put the Donald Ross flair back into the course.
Nothing remains static on a golf course for long.
Grass grows, often in new places and in unexpected ways. Bunkers shift as sand is blasted out by players. Trees grow, blocking light, air and playing lines. Undulations shift on greens, which themselves often shrink over years and decades. Whether through intentional architectural efforts or natural evolution, every golf course changes in time.
Opened in 1926 with a design by architectural legend Donald Ross, the East had undergone many changes over the decades, many of them in pursuit of additional challenge to the best players in the world. Among its many championships, the East has hosted three PGA Championships (1980, ’03 and ’13) and three U.S. Opens (1956, ’68 and ’89), with winners including the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and Curtis Strange. Add to those events a rich history of amateur and senior events, plus the 1995 Ryder Cup, and Oak Hill’s rich championship history clearly ranks among the best clubs in the world.
The greens for Nos. 4 and 5 at Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Rochester, New York (Photo: Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)
But the course had changed dramatically over the years, losing much of its Ross flavor. Robert Trent Jones tweaked the East in the 1950s and ’60s, including – in the name of spectator flow – the replacement of a par 4 considered by many to be among the best in the country.
In the 1970s, George and Tom Fazio further modernized the layout, redesigning three holes – the fifth, sixth and 15th – and moving the 18th green. While these changes were all implemented in the interest of increased difficulty for touring professionals, the club received criticism about eliminating too much of Ross’s original design.
Add in naturally occurring changes to the course over the years, and club officials knew it was time to make some changes.
“It’s just like owning a home in some regard. You always have to do some housekeeping, always have to do some updating,” said Jeff Corcoran, Oak Hill’s manager of golf courses and grounds. “And I think the progression of the game dictates a lot of the work you need to do, in some regards, if you want to be a golf course that hosts major championships.”
Starting in 2015, the club decided to put the Ross flair back into the course. It hired architect Andrew Green, who the club said worked with Corcoran; Jeff Sluman, PGA Tour professional and Rochester native; and an East Course Restoration Committee led by Tim Thaney and Jim McKenna. The club said its objectives were to add length where possible, create more forward tees for members, expand areas where cups could be cut into greens and to evaluate options for holes that had been changed over the years. Green used Ross’s original drawings and historical photos to determine the best course of action in restoring the layout.
“Donald Ross set the East Course at Oak Hill Country Club on a stunning piece of ground where the holes turn direction and flow over the property in an inspired fashion,” Green – who has established himself as a restoration expert with such work completed at Wannamoisett, Inverness, Congressional and several other such classic layouts – told the club at the outset of the restoration. “We will utilize every ounce of historic data to reflect the strategy, style and intent of Ross with a keen eye on the way the game of golf is played today. The results will protect the legacy of Oak Hill for decades to come.”
The newly renovated sixth hole at Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Rochester, N.Y. (Gary Kellner/PGA of America)
Work wrapped up in 2019, with each of the 18 greens having been rebuilt to U.S. Golf Association specifications with enhanced drainage to provide firm playing conditions. All the bunkers were rebuilt with improved drainage and some were relocated, and they are now more classically Ross in appearance. An overabundance of trees of was removed to improve playing conditions, open vistas and reestablish playing lines. More than 175,000 square feet of new bent grass was installed on the putting surfaces and approaches, the club said, and Green led the restoration of green sizes and sometimes the alteration of existing contours to reestablish classic hole locations that had been lost in time.
“The big thing people are going to see is a tremendous amount of variety in the daily setup, because there are going to be hole locations that members haven’t seen for maybe 40, 50 years,” Green said in a club video commemorating the restoration. “It’s going to add to the aura and how great a major championship venue that it is.”
Most important, the three holes that been altered by previous designers were rebuilt to better match the intent of Ross, even if it was impossible to rebuild them exactly.
“Nos. 5, 6, 15 and to a lesser extent 18 had been the three or four holes that have been the most vilified here at Oak Hill,” Corcoran said. “They are the holes that were redone prior to the ’80 PGA. As we were walking around, we were like, if we’re going to all this trouble on the East Course, shouldn’t we rectify this biggest perceived problem?
“It really came down to, if we were going to redo something, how would we redo it in keeping the original architectural intent that Donald Ross had envisioned of this property? Andrew is phenomenal at that.”
The newly renovated fifth hole at Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Rochester, N.Y. (Gary Kellner/PGA of America)
Green designed a new fifth hole, a par 3 named Little Poison, in the same spot that held a par-3 fifth for the 1968 U.S. Open. The new green is slightly elevated and surrounded by Ross-inspired bunkers, with a wide range of flagstick locations and assorted challenges for any player who misses the putting surface on approach.
The club said the new par-4 sixth “sympathetically represents” Ross’s original par 4. Named Double Trouble, the hole crosses Allen’s Creek – a prominent feature throughout any round on the East – and can be stretched beyond 500 yards in a championship.
The new par-3 15th hole, named Plateau, removes a pond introduced during the Fazios’ renovation in the 1970s and reintroduces a large swale aside the “Postage Stamp” style of green that is long and narrow.
“They just feel like they flow,” Corcoran said of the new holes. “When you used to go to the old fifth and sixth holes, you would get to those holes and go, it just doesn’t flow, it doesn’t feel right. Anybody who had a little bent toward golf course architecture could definitely see it.
“Restoring that architectural intent, there’s just something very satisfying about that and knowing that future generations are going to get 18 contiguous holes to play out here. That’s a pretty special thing.”
A daily-fee golf course has reversed a policy that forced players to take a Breathalyzer test to prove they didn’t consume alcohol.
After receiving social media backlash, a daily-fee golf course in Western New York has reversed a policy that forced players to take a Breathalyzer test after their rounds to prove they didn’t consume alcohol on the course.
The Buffalo Tournament Club in the suburb of Lancaster, New York, had instituted a policy that forced players to pay a “corkage fee” to bring alcohol on the golf course. The club stopped running a beverage cart on the course, insisting it cost too much to staff and maintain.
So club officials allowed players to bring their own cooler with beer and other drinks for a $5 per player fee. Those who were not bringing alcohol on the course also needed to pay the fee, but could be refunded their money if they paid $1 to take a Breathalyzer test at the completion of the round.
A few comments on social media caused quite a stir after the policy went into effect.
This is absolute madness on Buffalo Tournament Club’s part. Corkage fee? Breathalyzers? What is happening? pic.twitter.com/2FILcyhcnL
— Buffalo Golf & Social (@BuffaloGolfSoc) April 15, 2023
The 2022-23 season was JJ Starling’s first for Notre Dame and also his last. One day after it was reported that the freshman was entering the transfer portal, a decision already is known. He told ESPN that he has committed to Syracuse, a longtime conference rival for the Irish.
Geographically, the move makes sense for Starling, who is from the Syracuse suburb of Baldwinsville, New York. It is unknown how much new coach Adrian Autry played a factor, but at the very least, the Orange have a successor for Jim Boeheim. The Irish do not yet have a replacement for [autotag]Mike Brey[/autotag], though they might be waiting to see when their candidates’ seasons are over.
This is a tremendous loss for the Irish, and not only because Starling would have been the top returning scorer (11.2 points a game) had he stayed in South Bend. He is the Irish’s top recruit since 2000 according to 247Sports. That they couldn’t hold onto the future NBA talent for his entire collegiate career can’t sit well with the program or its fans.
There doesn’t seem to be much ill will towards the Irish though. When asked to comment about Brey, Starling said the following:
“Coach Brey was a great coach and person. Even while going through tough times, he tried his best to make sure he was there for all of the players and continued to relay the message: ‘We only have each other.’ I wish him the best in whatever he decides to do.”
We wish Starling well, though not too well when the Orange and Irish face off next season.
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Read some final words summing up the season and a whole era of Irish basketball.
Notre Dame’s 67-64 loss to Virginia Tech in the ACC Tournament signaled the end of an era. Yes, it means [autotag]Mike Brey[/autotag]’s days as Irish coach are over, but it also means the end for many players on the roster, especially rotational players. Two of them are [autotag]Marcus Hammond[/autotag] and [autotag]Cormac Ryan[/autotag], players who didn’t begin their collegiate careers with the Irish but were the most impactful in Brey’s final game for the program. That allowed them to come out with Brey for the season’s last postgame news conference.
Hammond and Ryan sat next to Brey as he, among other things, called out the officials for a late lengthy review that ultimately resulted in a dead-ball technical for [autotag]Matt Zona[/autotag] that might have affected the game’s outcome. This came as the Irish were about to shoot their own free throws in a close contest. Brey has called out ACC officials before, and he apparently decided to do it one more time on his way out.
The sportsbooks said they could offer worse odds to New York customers if tax rates aren’t reduced.
The greedy overlords of the sports betting industry have descended upon New York, and they’ve decided they want more.
In what was supposed to be a review Tuesday of how things went in the state’s first year of legal betting — and they went quite well — online sports betting behemoths FanDuel and DraftKings argued to the Committee on Racing, Gaming and Wagering that New York’s 51% tax rate on online betting was too high.
New York made more than $709 million in tax revenue on more than $16 billion in wagers through the year ending on Jan. 7, but FanDuel president Christian Genetski and DraftKings CEO Jason Robins argued the state has peaked. If New York doesn’t lower the rate, they said, customers would pay the penalty in the form of worse betting odds and fewer promotions.
“We do not believe that this level of economic success is sustainable with the current tax rate of 51%,” Genetski said, per SBCAmericas. “Although it’s only been one year since the market launched, there are clear signs that the New York market has already peaked, whereas other states remain on a solidly upward trajectory.”
This, of course, is no reason to shed a tear for sportsbook companies that negotiated the 51% tax rate in the first place. The first year was a success, so why would they want to come back to the table for any other reason than to get a larger piece of the pie?
FanDuel recommended a tax reduction to 35%, according to Legal Sports Report, saying a more competitive rate would lead to an estimated $350 million-plus in additional total gross revenue over a three-year period. But the sportsbook couldn’t provide concrete evidence to support the claim.
Thankfully, the NY state legislature doesn’t seem to be falling for the old bait and switch just yet. And without assurances that revenues will increase or stay the same, they shouldn’t.
“There was no sunset, so you knew it was 51% going forward. You negotiated it. You agreed to it,” state senator and committee chairman Joe Addabbo said. “And now we have these numbers, and there’s no real foundation to say these numbers are suffering at this point.”
Including the $200 million in licensing fees New York collected from sports betting, the state has generated a total of more than $909 million in revenue, with the majority supposedly going towards education. If DraftKings and FanDuel want to negotiate a smaller tax rate, they need to show that number won’t shrink. Or bring a better bargaining chip to the table than threats of robbing their own customers.
As New York assemblyman and co-committee chair Gary Pretlow said Tuesday, if they worsen odds, people can simply take their business to another sportsbook. And if they’re all juicing the books, that signals a level of collusion worth getting the attorney general involved.
Another season of Notre Dame basketball is underway. After a one-year absence, the action tips off once again with an exhibition game. This time, they’ll be welcoming Division III program Nazareth College of Rochester, New York, to South Bend. Here are five things to think about as the Irish see their first game action of the season:
